THE INTERCEPTED TELEGRAM.
That afternoon confinement in the house became so irksome to Grantley Mellen that he could support it no longer, so he put on his hat and hurried out into the grounds.
Upon one point his mind was fully made up. The clue to the mystery appeared to be in his hands; he would follow it out to the end now—he would know the worst. If this woman had wronged him he resolved to sweep her out of his life, even as he had done that false one in years gone by.
That thought drove him nearly mad, it recalled that writing. Should it prove the same! If this man had a second time thrust himself into his life to blacken it with his treachery and hate! Terrible words died, half uttered, on Mellen's lips, his face was fairly livid with passion, a loathing and a hatred which only blood could wipe out.
Below the house the lawn and gardens led away into a grove, and towards its gloom Mellen mechanically directed his steps under the cold, gray sky. A chill wind was blowing up from the water, but he did not observe it; in the fever which consumed him the air seemed absolutely stifling, and he hurried on, increasing its excess by rapid movements.
He was in the grove, walking up and down, with no settled purpose, striving only to escape those maddening thoughts which still clung to him.
The wind was shaking the few remaining leaves from the trees and blowing them about in rustling dreariness, the frosts had already touched the grass and ferns, and though the place on a bright day would still have been lovely, it looked bare and melancholy enough under that frowning sky.
"It is like my life," muttered Mellen; "like my life, with an added blackness coming up beyond."
Then his mood changed; again that fierce passion swept over his face, leaving it dangerous and terrible.
"If that woman has deceived me," he cried aloud, "this time I will have no mercy! She shall taste her degradation to the very dregs; there is no depth of shame through which I will not drag her, though I ruin my own soul in doing it! But it can't be! it can't be! It were death to believe it! Oh, Elizabeth, Elizabeth!"